The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group McAfee Office 2000 Bernadette Houghton bernieh@iaccess.com.au

McAfee Office is a huge armload of a box, so large that I experienced an illogical feeling of disappointment on opening it to find only a single CD and a 250 page manual. When I last reviewed Office in February 1999, I found it a juicy collection of utilities, most of which do a reasonable job. This time around, several of the old standbys have been upgraded, and McAfee has trimmed the suite a little by dropping Hurricane and Guard Dog. McAfee has also cleaned up much of the rampant file duplication, substantially reducing the amount of disk space required by the full package.

Bringing together all the elements of the suite is Office Central, which acts as a command centre (a.k.a. menu) for each application. In this review, I offer a brief summary of those applications that have already featured in earlier issues of PC Update, with a more indepth look at the upgraded applications.

First Aid 2000

First Aid 2000 checks PC hardware and software for a range of problems, including outdated drivers, hardware and software conflicts, and configuration errors (Figure 1). Wherever possible, First Aid repairs problems, but if it can't, it tells you how to do so yourself: If the problem continues, First Aid's Advisor asks you a series of questions and offers possible solutions based on your answers. If Advisor fails to help, First Aid refers you to its Tech Support Yellow Pages which lists the contact details of various support services.

The great thing about First Aid is that it always offers an alternative if one option doesn't work. Its knowledge base is quite comprehensive, and while it won't answer every question you may have, it will point you in the right direction for further advice. An annoying feature is that many Advisor screens lack a Back button so navigation is often awkward. The Tech Support Yellow Pages has a North American slant, with mainly USA addresses and telephone numbers; happily, however, URLs are included too.

Nuts & Bolts 98

Nuts & Bolts is a fat collection of diagnostic and repair utilities (Figure 2). You'll find a defragger, an enhanced version of scandisk and a TrashGuard which dumps all deleted files (even those you delete in DOS) into your Recycle Bin. There is a document shredder, a zip file manager, a Registry Wizard, a Launch Rocket to speed up application launch times and lots more. I particularly like Retake which makes automatic backups of your documents as you work. Not all the utilities have a serious purpose; you'll also find an icon animator which spins, twirls and otherwise animates the icons on your desktop, and a utility to colour windows in pretty patterns.

VirusScan 4.0

VirusScan is a virus detection and cleansing program which runs on demand or in the background. It checks your e-mail and Internet downloads, and is capable of blocking hostile Java classes and ActiveX controls. Bob Burt gave VirusScan 4.0 the thumbs up in PC Update, March 1999.

Y2K Survival Kit

I reviewed Y2K Survival Kit (Y2KSK) in February 1999 as 2000 Toolbox, a collection of diagnostic and repair tools for the Year 2000 problem (Figure 3). Y2KSK checks your PC's hardware and software and claims to be able to fix Y2K data problems. There have been a few changes since my original review. Y2K Survival Kit checks a larger range of applications (6000, up from 150) and ensures that your Windows short date format displays with a 4-digit year. Y2KSK now integrates with Oil Change, and automatically logs on to the Oil Change Web site to check for fixes for any non-compliant applications it finds on your PC. If fixes are available, it offers you the option of downloading and installing them.

Unfortunately Y2KSK fared no better in my tests than did 2000 Toolbox. Most of the problems I identified then still exist. Y2KSK told me which applications it had checked, but not which it didn't. It failed to identify some common noncompliant software and to detect spreadsheets with date problems. This time around it appeared to identify all my problematic Access 2 and Access 7 databases but still couldn't fix any errors. It also incorrectly reported various problems as 'fixed', and couldn't locate a Windows 95 fix on the Oil Change site.

Y2KSK successfully identified noncompliant Y2K hardware in an old machine, but installed the fixer program in the wrong directory, requiring me to manually amend AUTOEXEC.BAT. Not a hassle for a computer geek like me, but it might be for a newbie.

Uninstaller 5.1

Uninstaller removes or archives old applications and cleans up the debris on your hard disk, such as orphaned, temporary or deleted files (Figure 4). It can also move applications to different drives or folders or even to another computer.

I found that Uninstaller doesn't work too well at uninstalling pre -Windows 95 applications, leaving a lot of files behind. However, it does a much better job of uninstalling some Windows 95 applications (e.g. Microsoft Publisher) than do the applications' own uninstall features!

Oil Change

Oil Change checks on the Internet for any updates to your currently installed software and offers you the option of downloading and installing any fixes it finds. Oil Change only checks for software which it knows about, but will undo any installation it has done.

Assessment

While McAfee has done a fair job of getting rid of most file redundancy, some still exists in that some programs include cut down versions of functions available in others. Nuts & Bolts System Checker, for instance, has a subset of the functionality of First Aid, and First Aid's Y2K Checker performs part of the same job as Y2KSK. There is no provision to choose not to install functions within utilities, and you'll still need a goodish chunk of disk space to install the whole suite.

McAfee Office includes almost every utility you'll ever need. There are diagnostic utilities, repair programs, backup utilities, performance enhancers and even a few purely fun utilities thrown in for good measure. Enough to keep software junkies busy for quite a while. It's not all gas and gaiters, however. Even though I installed McAfee Office on top of a clean Windows reinstallation, I experienced system hangs and other problems with a few utilities, principally those from Nuts & Bolts. To minimise conflicts, I suggest you install Office Central first, then one program at a time and test each thoroughly before installing the next.

McAfee Office is a great mix of utilities which will help improve the power and performance of your PC. While not all the utilities do a satisfactory job (notably Y2K Survival Kit), the whole bundle represents excellent value for money; just go slowly during installation.

Suggested retail price $149. Available from Chandlers, David Jones, Dick Smith Electronics, Harvey Norman. Download trial versions of individual products from: download.mcafee.com/eval/evaluate.asp.

Minimum System Requirements

486 processor (Pentium recommended), Windows 95, 16 MB RAM, 256-colour monitor, CD-ROM drive. Certain features require Internet connection. Free disk space requirements vary from 6 MB for Oil Change to 65 MB for First Aid; the whole suite requires 108 MB

Reprinted from the December 1999 issue of PC Update, the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia

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